Friday, February 3, 2012

February 3 – Find Your Cell!

Where will you most often find your phone when you’ve lost it? You probably know just where that is. Mine is more often than not in my bathrobe pocket (carrying it with me out of the bedroom in the morning and never thinking to look in such a silly place!) When I start searching for it later, my closet is ringing! Perhaps it’s the Lord, calling to see if I’m coming!

The Father waits in secret. Jesus told us that. Monastics believe it. He waits, and we believe He waits with some anticipation, as we do to see our grown children coming home, our grandchildren coming in the door, our husbands and wives home from the office . . . the Fed Ex truck!

Let’s leave that a moment, and speak a little more about our “cell,” the one we prepare for ourselves, the place where we know we will meet with God, because it is there that we meet with God! He is the Place! Some “tents of meeting” have been remarkable for the resonance of holiness they acquire.

One family welcomed a visiting missionary from a very poor area in Mexico. They made their guest room sparkling clean and inviting for this dear man who lived amidst such squalor and poverty. They afforded him every kindness and consideration possible, and at first they thought he was just enjoying his room so much that he wanted to stay there, in seclusion, every morning. Then they realized that he was up long before dawn, worshiping and praying, filling his room with the friendship he had with God. He came down to breakfast, glowing. Three days later, when the man of God left them, they went into his room and could barely stand for the lingering effect of the Presence … the friendship! … of God.

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Psalm 27:4

It has been my privilege to compile a "monastic" devotional for everyday life and for women in all walks of life. We take part in this "Cyber Monastery" for the purpose of growth in devotion and the "practice of the Presence of God."

Although we may never meet, we share this cloister and this life through our prayer and worship and small, determined steps in godliness.

Neither Catholicism nor holy orders are required here; this is the most ancient monasticism, the kind that took Anna into the temple in the second chapter of Luke, Moses into the Tent of Meeting, and Paul into seclusion in the early days of his conversion. Within our families and our churches, day and night, alone or in company, we are "marketplace monastics," living to bring pleasure to the heart of God.

Join us - your new "habit" awaits ... here in Cor Unum Abbey.

"One thing have I desired of the Lord; that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple."